Markus Huemer
at Art Antwerp 2022

Erdbeeren sind eigentlich Nüsse
(Strawberries Are Actually Nuts)
, 2021
Oil and pencil on canvas, 120 x 160 cm
EUR 20.500 (incl. VAT)

Markus Huemer works with the media of painting and drawing just as much as he creates interactive installations, environments or computer animations. He is working with and linking elements of art and media history in his art, thus using the artist’s means to discuss how the classical medium of painting can be continued with plausibility against the background of digital media.

Erdbeeren sind eigentlich Nüsse
(Strawberries Are Actually Nuts)
, 2021
Detail

Knowing that painted worlds, like net worlds, are imagined, completely artificial, Huemer develops families of works that explore the problem of reality, the construction of realities and their perception in different formats. To do this, he often uses multiple digital sources for each picture.

In this way, we believe to see something that – at first glance – we think we recognize. But when we look more closely, we understand that we do not understand anything. For what we see is neither a logical, plausible real space, nor a story, but an image for which a large group of digital images has been “stitched together,” and not an image that depicts any kind of analog reality.

Kaminroten Blutregen gibt es nicht in der Sonne
(There Is no Chimney Red Rain of Blood in the Sun), 2021
Detail

Huemer gives his works titles that are absurd, illogical, and oblique and have no relation to what is (apparently) being depicted. These titles underline the non-existent function of the work as a tool for representing reality.

Kaminroten Blutregen gibt es nicht in der Sonne
(There Is no Chimney Red Rain of Blood in the Sun), 2021
Oil and pencil on canvas, 160 x 120 cm
EUR 20.500 (incl. VAT)

Recent works by Markus Huemer

Markus Huemer (*1968 in Linz, lives and works in Berlin) studied painting at the University of Art and Industrial Design in Linz and at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. He became involved with media art early on at Ars Electronica in Linz, and later received a fellowship at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. In 1998-99 he was a fellow at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, and from 2007 to 2015 he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.

Also on view at Art Antwerp 2022